Slitherine

Sadly I can't remember... its an age thing.

madcam2us wrote:It would give us CONUS waiting till the 21st some sense of what is needed for painting....

But only for the pre-1632 list

rbodleyscott wrote:

madcam2us wrote:It would give us CONUS waiting till the 21st some sense of what is needed for painting....

But only for the pre-1632 list

No Poles in the first book - the first list for them is in Clash of Empires.

nikgaukroger wrote:

rbodleyscott wrote:

madcam2us wrote:It would give us CONUS waiting till the 21st some sense of what is needed for painting....

But only for the pre-1632 list

No Poles in the first book - the first list for them is in Clash of Empires.

3rd book is'nt it.

nikgaukroger wrote:

Still, I thought it a lack of enough mounted that lead to him not wanting to take on the Poles far from his fortress. I hope early Swedish armies are hamstrung in their mounted compositions.

Madcam.

Swedish horse is, to some degree, hamstrung as late as Breitenfeld ...

I'm not sure why you think that the Swedish Horse was hamstrung at Breitenfeld? As far as quality and performance goes Breitenfeld was the high point of Gustavus cavalry, 61% of the regiments were veterans who had served previously in Prussia as part of the Swedish or Polish armies with some regiments having been part of the Danish army in the TYW as well. 11% were of the regiments had a core of veteran companies from the war with Poland-Lithuania and new companies recruited in Germany 1628-1630. 17% were units raised in Germany but well seasoned and trained with 11-14 months in Swedish service, the final 11% had been in service 4 months or less but in the case of at least one of the two regiments in question the time in service could be misleading as Schaffmann's regiment was made up of exiled Bohemians and Silesians who may well have had a more than a fair bit of combat experience already.
Despite a ferocious struggle that was only surpassed in intensity by Wittstock 4 years later there is no record of even a single Swedish cavalry regiment being broken & routed, something which happend inmost of the other battles of the war.

Post Breitenfeld the quality of the Swedish cavalry decline, not because the units themselves got poorer but because good units were spread out in order to give the new armies being formed at leas tsoem battle hardend cavalry. Their place was taken by a mixture of raw new units and allies. Of course these became seasoned if given time but the overall quality would be much more varied. The Hunger War at Nürnberg also did a number on the Swedish cavalry which can be seen by the fact that at Lützen over 3000 cavalrymen took no part in the battle due to a lack of horses.

It is first at Wittstock you see a recovery to a level of overall performance that was similar to that at Breitenfeld though the exceptional endurance of the Swedish cavalry at Wittstock was also the result of a lot of leadership bonuses It certainly helps if a single wing of ones army enjoys the benefit of having both Torstensson and Baner present. At 2nd Breitenfeld the Swedes routed both Imperial wings despite the Imperials having 60% mote cavalry than the Swedish in the battle. It was only when the excellent Bavarian regiments joined the Imperial army that things got troublsome, at Janow the hard fighting Bavarians broke clean through the the Swedish cavalry in the 3rd phase of the battle and only their becomign preoccupied with the rich loot found in the Swedish baggage train gave the Swedes the time needed to reform and rally.

DanielS wrote: I'm not sure why you think that the Swedish Horse was hamstrung at Breitenfeld?

Only to some degree. Repeated reference's to the poorer quality of Swedish horseflesh (and also a bit of taking into account sometimes patchy level of equipment) until after Breitenfeld led us to limit the quality grading, however, if used with commanded shot, etc. they should still be able to reproduce the battle with, indeed, a ferocious struggle.

That is certainly a valid point, however it only applied to the native Swedish & Finnish units, the other 80% had German horses no diffrent from the Imperials and Leaugists and the reports make that distinction clear. And when the native Swedish horse was labled "pretty bad" by Imperial commanders in their reports it was based on the apperance rather than performance and is a bit of doubt IMHO if the small Swedish horses had any noticable impact on the performace of the native cavalry. It certainly didn't prevent the native units from riding down Lithuanian hussars in head on clashes without support from commanded shot in Livonia. That said I do think there should be limits to the quality rating of the native regiments though I tend to focus more on the diffrences in officer quality and unit history than the horseflesh. Some units such as Stalhandske's Finns or the Soop brothers' Vastgota were excellent units while the Smalanders and Sodermanlanders had a less distinguished perfomance, just was with other tradtional 'super units' such as the Polish hussars there is not much justification for a uniformly high rating. Rather the opposite.